Making Sense of Renewables’ “Tough Realities”

Hello, let me begin by introducing myself. I’m Craig Shields, editor of 2GreenEnergy.com – a site on which my guests and I try to make sense of the myriad elements that underlie the migration to clean energy. I’m sure you’ve noticed how there are strong political alliances forming here. In one camp there are environmentalists who can’t see why this didn’t happen in the 1970s when we had our first Earth Day, and our first brush with oil scarcity. On the other side you have folks who look at all this as liberal whining – who don’t see the need for it to happen now — or ever. But why are there two sides to an issue in which all participants win? Unless you own one hell of a lot of stock in ExxonMobil or one of a few other oil companies, no one loses in pushing clean energy on a civilization where fossil fuels cause nothing but harm.

After a 30-year career as a business consultant to companies like IBM, H-P, FedEx, 3M, Porsche, and Xerox, I decided to retire and start to really try to understand the new energy industry – aggressively sorting out all the foolishness and rancor.

In particular, I write about the “tough realities” in which we all live. My recent book, “Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies (Clean Energy Press, 2010) even includes this “tough realities” idea as its subtitle. Renewable energy advocates, if they are to remain credible, need to deal with the fact that there are technological, economic, and political forces that make this a bit trickier than it appears at first glance. And the Sarah Palins of the world need to accept that concerns about global warming, national security, skyrocketing rates of childhood cancer, and the threat of terrorism are really not “snake-oil science”; they’re the peer-respected conclusions of the vast majority of serious scientists.